November 30, 2021 • 41 mins
These days, most folks think of Little Orphan Annie as a folksy, wholesome slice of nostalgia -- but during its heyday as a radio program, parents across the US became increasingly concerned. The show, they thought, had a deep, dangerous hold on the minds of children. In the first part of this two-part series, Ben and Noel dive into the surprising controversy surrounding Little Orphan Annie.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's have a big hand
for our one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
I am Ben. I'm a big I think you can
clap for yourself. Max, you've fully support Yes, Yes, that
is my rider die Mr Noel Brown himself, the one
(00:50):
and only. I am Ben Boland. We're hurtling headlong toward
the end of one the beginning of two. Uh. This
is the time of year when a lot of people
in the US, regardless of their personal religious beliefs, are
living in Christmas Land. Right. We've we've just gotten over
(01:10):
the Thanksgiving hump. Hope everybody had a good one, and
now for the next. For the next few weeks, everything
is gonna be Christmas. Right. It's gonna be the Mariah
Carey song again, right, and all the all the old hits. Yeah.
People have really strong opinions about that Mariah Carey song.
Like there's some jukeboxes that won't let you play it
(01:32):
more than once, you know, any given night. I've seen
memes about it. It's very divisive. I mean it's obviously
a stone called banger, But do I want to hear
it like ad nauseum throughout the Christmas time? It does
kind of suck some of the joy out of the
song when it's beaten to death, you know. Yeah, And
and television shows will have themed Christmas episodes your Saturday
(01:53):
Night Lives, your Simpsons and so on. You will also
see a lot of nostalgia, and you'll see things become
singularly important, like every every parent in the audience today Again,
whether or not you celebrate Christmas, you've heard the same stories.
They come back, insert toy here is the new hot thing,
(02:14):
and thus it is impossible to find, you know, an
Elmo that wants you to tickle it, which no one
thinks it's creepy for some reason, but everybody needs one
and they did. That was a frenzy around that weird toy. Uh.
It's one of those things where it's like, I think
the frenzy just comes from the exclusivity, right, Like you
gotta wonder is it manufactured? Do they not make enough
(02:36):
of them on purpose? So there would be this like
massive hysteria around what is ultimately a pretty obnoxious toy.
The novelty of which would probably wear out pretty quick
for most kids. You don't even see them around anymore,
Like I've never run into one, like in a thrift
store or anything, which surprising. Maybe they are covenant, maybe
like people just held onto them. And and it is
still continues to be an item of great pride that
(02:58):
you that you got one, you know, yeah, like a
badge of of capitalist honor, you know, like you wouldn't
see a purple heartner thrift store. Maybe that's uh, maybe
that is an unfair comparison spoiling, which would be sad
but not. Yeah. And and so we were talking a
little bit off air about different things that happened in
(03:21):
the nostalgia wave of American Christmas. And we notice, of
course that there are the same movies that pop up.
People watch them almost ritualistically with their loved ones, family
and friends. There's one film without the most creative name,
but it's definitely a classic this time of year. It's
called a Christmas Story, and the Christmas Story plot concerns
(03:45):
the adventures of a young man named Ralphie Ralphie Parker,
and a lot of stuff goes down here. It's kind
of tough to spoil this one, NOL, I think because
the story is so quin essentially like established culture, but
we're we're using poor Ralphie as a tangent here, I
believe a segway or just just kind of like a
(04:08):
setting the stage kind of situation. You know. It's funny
been um here in Atlanta, I think this might be
at our neck of the woods center kind of thing.
But on TBS every year, they for for many many years,
they would play a Christmas story for like twenty like
on a loop leading up to Christmas, like over and
over and over and over again. So I'm pretty sure
(04:28):
I've seen the entirety of a Christmas story, just not
in the right order. Like I I know everything about
that movie literally more more like backwards than front words,
but I absolutely know everything that happened. But I don't
think I've ever sat down in one go and watched
a Christmas story. Oh fun. So so you have a postmodern,
(04:50):
you have a post experience non linear. I love it,
and it is ultimately a postmodern kind of story because
it's a retelling of an era sort of stylized kind
of fantasy version of the nineteen fifties, um, you know,
with Ralphie and his brother and the you know, his
father and the leg lamp that was like, what was
(05:11):
that He got that as a prize or some sort
of clearinghouse sweep steaks or something like that, this major reward.
I just remember that, but I don't remember quite how
he got it. Yeah, it's um, it's weird, like a
love letter to this period of time, definitely through rose
colored glasses. It's uh, it's believed to be set in
(05:32):
nineteen forty, but there are a lot of anachronisms in
there because it's really it's really more about the vibe,
like the Norman Rockwell esque vibe of how people viewed
America at the time. And it heads up, folks, this
is a two part episode. This is gonna be a
wild ride. We're gonna go some weird places, will return
to a good place. But we are very proud of
(05:54):
ourselves for making sure you know it's a two part episode.
In advance. Thank you Max, Thank you Uh Nolan. I
would like to accept this award on behalf of all
the other episodes that accidentally became two parters. Major award,
this major award. And there's this thing, No, there's this
thing that happens there. There's so many iconic moments in
(06:17):
a Christmas story that you almost just remember them as
moments rather than like one long narrative. You know, he
gets his tongue stock, he curses in front of his parents,
you'll shoot your eye out, etcetera. For a big part
of the movie, he has this quest two interact with
his favorite radio program, the equivalent of like his favorite
(06:39):
TV show, and his favorite radio program is something called
Little Orphan Annie. Uh and Max Nolan, I have a
clip of this the Little Orphan Annie radio show that
we'd like to would like to just drop in play that.
For us, it was the Little Church Balls Want Long?
(07:03):
Who do you see? It's a little yesterday. Remember Mr
Flint was trying to sell stock in the new Bridge
to Jake at the emporium. But and he convinced Jake
you ought to think the matter over before he went
into debt to buy stock. But here it is the
(07:23):
next day after school and Annie and joy of walking
across the snowy field pard the river to see the
new bridge. She'd see any it sure did seem good
to get back to the old school again, didn't I'll
say it? Did you? Gee? The kids were awful glad
to see it's worth it, and I was awful glad
to see them. Wow, gee, Willakers, that was an awful
team Ben, Where did you dig that one up? Whole wowser? Okay,
(07:49):
So I'm sorry, I just I think we buried the
lead there little bit. She's trying to convince somebody not
to go into debt to buy stock. That's that's that's
the conflict, that's the central const like in this episode.
This episodes from nineteen thirty six. So yeah, I didn't
want to spoil the whole thing, but yeah, I'm glad
that stood out to you guys as well, the concept
(08:10):
of like what do children worry about? Yeah, so this
was a theme. I mean, this is something that that
played throughout the series. Um, you know, it originally was
a comic strip that was based on subject matter that
went even further back to a five poem called Little
(08:30):
Orphans Annie by James Whitcomb Riley. I think it maybe
it wasn't based on that exactly, but originally the comic
was going to be called Little Orphan Auto Um, but
a friend of the comic strip creator, Harold Gray, was
convinced to change the name and the you know, the
gender of the of the main protagonist to Little Orphan
(08:50):
Annie based on the I think popularity of that poem.
But it was all about like strike breaking and like
it was very anti Roosevelt policies. You know, it was
very interesting. And then it was like clearly you know,
meant for kids, I think, but I mean adults like
the Funnies too. There's a lot of an interesting kind
of like buried adult messaging and like old comic strips.
(09:13):
If you look back at the the father or the
adoptive father, the figure, Yeah, it's literally named Warbucks as
a surname, so that's clearly seems like a war profit
here went over my head as a kid. I thought
he was just wealthy, going over my head until you
just pointed it up. And I didn't even think about
(09:34):
the the not too subtle buried message their war bucks,
like it was my war chests, you know, Yeah, that's
exactly what it was. Um. But that transferred over to
the radio show and then this was like you know
the golden age of of wireless you know, the radio people,
families gathering around hearing you know, the news and all
(09:54):
of that stuff. But also these serialized drama performances, you
know that that like you know, had new stories, Monster
of the Week kind of things a week to week. Yeah. Yeah.
And here's the thing. So if you look back at
this now from one, it's easy for us to go, okay,
that's not necessarily controversial. There are some hidden political agendas
(10:18):
in there. Are they a proposed to today? Maybe not exactly.
And this probably goes over the heads of most children.
It might surprise folks to realize that a lot of
parents were squigged out by this radio program because it
had a hold on their children. And when we say hold,
(10:41):
it had the same kind of hold that a show
like Breaking Bad, or The Sopranos or or The Wire
a Game of Thrones would have on people. But it
was a children's show and it was four kids, and
it was able to direct children to do things, to
push their parents for things, namely products, right to make
(11:02):
their parents buy stuff because uh, you know, little orphan anity,
just like old dirty Bastard said about Wu tang is
for the kids. Parents were freaked out. They didn't appreciate
all the child directed marketing. They were to the mercy
of whatever these folks who created the show decided to
(11:24):
sell absolutely and little or Finanni was also in the
words of the wood Saint clani Fern, which remember nothing
to with because her catchphrase was she was the spunky
orphan with a heart of gold and a fast left,
and that was referring to the fact that she and
(11:44):
her dog Sandy were kind of this like almost like
detective pair Like you could clearly see the influence and
other pop culture pairings of like kid detectives, kind of
like Scooby Doo for example, you know, clearly influenced by
the pairing of you know, Annie and her dog um
or things like Brain and Penny and inspector Gadget. You know,
this is very much a pop culture trope that clearly
(12:06):
got its beginnings here. But you're right, then the political
you know, messaging aside, which apparently really you know, stemmed
from Gray's own political views. Um many of the plots
of the comics, apparently, um almost got the comic pulled
from the newspapers that it ran in, Like I'm just
gonna really quickly because this interesting time ran an article
(12:27):
called the surprisingly controversial plots that almost got Little Orphan
Annie axed, one of which I'm just gonna read it
right from here because it's fantastic. Um. The plot takes
a turn for the propagandistic when political racketeers threatened to
destroy one of Daddy Warbuck's factories. To the editor of
the Huntington Herald Dispatch, the rhetorics seems better suited to
Ann Rand than to America's Best Love Orphan, as he
(12:50):
describes the offending plotline per time, here's from the letter
to the editor. All political leaders, and it follows every
public official are at once indicted as crooks. And to
accept such a sweeping indictment is to permit the creator
of Little Orphan, Annie and the Chicago Tribune syndicate to
attack and condemn all persons, all institutions, and all ideas
(13:11):
save those they choose to label acceptable. And I pointed
out because it's interesting because clearly the source material of
this comic, or the inspiration behind it, I guess, is
pretty virulently pro capitalism. It's a little interesting because it's
the dude's politics seems to change a little bit as
(13:31):
time goes on, but he ends up in a place that,
while seeming to be like pro hard work and the
working man and all that really kind of raises up
characters like Daddy Warbucks, who are ultimately the you know,
fat cats right in the factories and all of that stuff,
And it takes on this kind of weird, almost propagandistic tone, right, Yeah,
but it was very randy and in its concepts, you know,
(13:56):
just just as you said. In fact, when F. D
Are was elected president in thirty two, Great appeared to
kill off Warbucks, later implying that Warbucks could not coexist
in the world with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He actually killed
(14:18):
him off in forty five, and then after the real
life Roosevelt dies, Gray brings Daddy Warbucks back and he
and he says in the comic strip, so how I
feel that the climate here has changed since I went away?
So it's like, come on, man, this is for kids.
What are you doing getting in their heads this way?
This is this is at best a precursor to the
(14:42):
approach that is later perfected by a big corporation Little
orphan AI. This massively successful radio program was I Kid
you not. This is a true story. It was pretty
much one long commercial. It was entirely sponsored by Ovaltine
(15:03):
and the writing staff they were all advertising executives at Ovaltine.
You know, for some, for some advertisers, this is like
a dream you wouldn't dare to dream. The radio show
existed entirely to propagate the use of Ovaltine in the
American public, and it was so successful because it was
(15:27):
a new approach. It was a new kind of media
um well, not necessarily a new strategy, but it was
new in terms of its target audience. And we see
the dangers of this reflected today and things like um
Facebook or Metaverse or whatever meta I'm supposed to call
them now apparently you can see this and things like
their plans to make an Instagram for children, exclusively and
(15:50):
specifically for children. And this just shows us that there
is a cyclical, continual history of media technology scares when
it comes to kids, like even now, you know, there's
a lot of debate about when a child should have
a smartphone or when a kid should be allowed to
have UM Well, nowadays, I guess to be a TikTok
(16:10):
account because kids aren't really on Facebook unless they have
to keep in touch with you know, their mom or
their uncle or something. But what's startling is that it's
not so surprising that these conversations always come up, but
it is incredibly surprising that they are so similar from
one century to the next. I mean, you and I
(16:32):
were looking into some of this stuff and we found
a great Slate article called a History of Media Technology
Scares or Don't Touch that Dial by Vaughan Bell, and
in this Bell points out that these concerns over like
technology and how it affects it molds the young minds
of children date all the way back to the birth
(16:52):
of literacy. Was a technology that's so crazy and I
love this and we're gonna get back to a Christmas
story and all of the uh, you know, new fangled technology,
you know as we kind of know it today, which
really set the groundwork for what we know as advertising
and television and commercials and all of that good stuff.
But it's true, Uh, it was intensely distrusted. Socrates warned
(17:16):
against writing itself because he thought that it would quote
create forgetfulness and the learners souls. And let's remember that
so much of the history and mythology of that time
was passed down through the oral tradition, and it was
very important memorization and all of that was such a
crucial feature of that storytelling and essentially academia. So Socrates
(17:41):
warned that it would actually corrupt the youth. He advised
that children won't be able to distinguish fantasy from reality,
and so it's up to parents to ensure that they
only hear allegories that are deemed to be proper as
opposed to quote unquote improper tales. Uh could in fact
completely screw up their developmental process, you know, as their
(18:05):
brains are developing in this crucial time. And you know,
the this whole line of thinking from Socrates really did
set a foundation for what we think of today as
like too much screen time. You know, it's kind of
evolved into that kind of thinking. Are like video games
will rot your brain and all that kind of stuff.
Older generations typically worn and are suspicious of new technology,
(18:29):
whatever it might be, whether it's um even the new
type of music. You know, like to maybe our grandparents,
like jazz and kind of swing music at the time
would have been incredibly controversial, you know, to their parents.
They would have thought of that as there's the devil's music.
And nowadays, you know, with music being so all over
the place, and they're being certainly some pretty extreme forms
(18:50):
of it. Parents that maybe aren't as keyed into that
kind of pop culture stuff certainly, or maybe you're a
little more religious in their background certainly could look at
things like slipnot or like heavier music is absolutely being demonic,
you know, satanic in some way and not not to
mention like corrupting like centuries ago. So when it's like
I don't and music with different instruments, that's on God,
(19:14):
Like give me Gregorian chat. Okay, back when things were good,
I like this is you're you're absolutely right. And the
same thing happened with television, The same thing happened with VHS,
the same thing happened with dungeons and dragons. Now it's
a social media technology. Yeah, now it's all about social media.
And so when the radio came into play, this immediately
(19:37):
fit the bill of a new technological threat to the
minds of the young. Wireless radio was now accused of
distracting children from practicing the same literacy Socrates have warned
about so long ago. Radio was apparently also making children
do terribly in school, and a big part of the
blame fell specifically on these audio thick shin programs, which
(20:01):
now are considered so like old timey you you find
them as nostalgia clips on YouTube, or if you go
into a a Cracker Barrel, which is a nostalgia based
restaurant here in the US, you'll see you'll see DVDs
of stuff like Little or fananim or The Shadow Knows
sold in their um faux country store. But think about
(20:23):
the alternative what it was luring kids away from. You know,
they're like very strict taskmasterly like school teachers that were
just kind of teaching them. They're you know, reading, writing
and arithmetic, probably not with a whole lot of theatrical flare.
So I mean even just the most basic kind of
levels of performativeness or theatricality that they would hear on
(20:43):
what we now you know, clock is being incredibly dated
and stuffy. Radio shows would have been just like a
whole new world of of of information and of just
you know, and absolutely could have could have been distracting.
It's described here, um in this Slate article, Um his
sure you have media technology scares from the printing press
to Facebook. Um As. Actually they quote a Grammophone magazine
(21:07):
article from ninety six um and it says that children
quote had developed the habit of dividing attention between the
hum drum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling
excitement of the loudspeaker. Yeah, play that back in your head, folks,
because I I have a question, and I don't want
this to be gotcha journalism or got a game show
(21:28):
question for you guys, but Noel Max, When is the
last time that you just watched a television show or
a film without also being on your phone, without also,
you know, working on something on your computer, Or when's
the last time you listen to a song without also
being on your phone or engaging with some other piece
(21:50):
of media. That's what the grammophone is complaining about, right, Well,
it's an important question, and I think the pandemic has
really tipped the scales in a negative way. I mean,
spent so much time just consuming media in our homes
and multitasking with the subtitles on and and we have
just infinite distractions at our fingertips. I recently went and
saw a movie in the theater and and it kept
(22:12):
having to fight the urge to whip out my phone.
But you know that in the theater you will get
shamed and and for good reason. But at home, when
it's just you in charge, you can do whatever you want.
And I would argue that you are not fully experiencing
any of those things, you know, if you're like kind
of bouncing back and forth between watching the New Dune
movie while also checking the you know, doom scrolling on
(22:32):
Instagram and also perhaps um, you know, dealing with a
kid or something that's actually there in person. Okay, so
for you, it was a it was a movie. It
was you answer to your question was it was? It
was a movie in the theater a week or so ago,
I saw The French Dispatch by west Anderson. Nice Max,
(22:52):
how about you? Yeah, I look that Noel mentioned like
a movie because like when I'm watching a movie, whether
it's at home or out, I will generally us watch that.
But from at home, I'll take a break and go
do something. But like, and I watch a lot of sports.
And if I'm watching sports, I'm like have multiple games on.
I will be texting people, I will be doing watch
mccallough and everything else in the side. Like I never
(23:13):
just sit down really just watch TV and watched sports.
So yeah, it reminds me of there's a scene and oh, brother,
where art thou Where there the group is. I think
it's a brother art that where the group is singing
as the Saggy Bottom Boys. And then you cut to
different homes where people are listening to this song and
(23:34):
people are just sitting there in their rooms with the
radio on, just kind of nodding because they're fully they're
fully engaged. And so for the Gramophones example, and I
love that you bring this quote in all the Grammophones
example of multitasking is interesting because they phrase it as
the worst thing since unsliced bread. You know, if I
(23:57):
could play with that cliche. So it's strange because now
we see that that is normal in this age of
ubiquitous information. And as we continue, we are going somewhere
with this folks. We're going back to Annie. We're gonna
hang out with her for a while. As we continue
in this episode, it's a question that maybe you can
ask yourself and your friends and your family, um kids,
(24:20):
if you have kids, which is, how how normal is
it to multitask this way? And how normal should it be? Um?
It's a good question, and I think it really is
at the heart of the same argument that we still
make today when it comes to social media, it's too
(24:41):
intense based on you know, for kids brains, it takes
them too many different directions, and it gives them too much,
too many options, and they they're not really equipped maybe
to juggle all those options, just like I'm not equipped
to juggle watching done uh dooms growing on Instagram and
you know, pay them out with my cat. You know,
I would probably pick one and roll with it. And
(25:02):
that became the crux of the argument in the nineteen
thirties as these kind of children's radio hours began to
get more and more popular, and shows like specifically Little
or Finanni dealt with, you know, kind of more shady
aspects of of life. You know, there's like seductive villains
and you know, cat burglars like you know, breaking into
(25:24):
homes and criminals and like very unsavory types that maybe
kids would have kind of been um shielded from even
knowing about. Yeah, yeah, and children have a tremendous capacity
for imagination and radio creates, uh, something that we still
owe a lot to in the world of podcasting, which
(25:44):
is a theater of the mind of folks. We hope
that you enjoy our occasional re enactments of things on
on any of the shows the three of us do
because there are a lot of work, but there are
a lot of fun and we quite enjoy them. Podcast
making No Mistake at her best or a direct descendant
from the golden age of radio. Parents were worried, like,
(26:06):
I like that you pointed this out, man. Parents were
worried that this gave kids too much to think about,
to put it in really simple terms, and that it
might make things that are dangerous in real life seem appealing. Right, mysterious,
Edgy Cool, I love that you just said. Mysterious. Bennett
(26:28):
reminds me of There's this amazingly hilarious and heartwarming scene
in The Sopranos where Bobby bacalas kids they've lost their mother, um,
and there's a whole subplot where like Janice is like
trying to essentially, you know, reel them in and make
become like the new mom, and she's told psychopath playing
all these head games. But at one point Bobby's daughter
(26:48):
is upset and Bobby's like, did you let her read
her Nancy Drew book? So it was like she wouldn't
even calm down by reading her Nancy Drew book. She
said they were too mysterious. That's great, h Nancy drew, Well, yeah,
like this is this is fascinating. There's a letter that
one guy wrote to The New York Times with the
(27:10):
ninety three and he described, uh, he described the delatorious
effects that radio's children's hours would have on his kid.
He said the adventures were all too hair raising, and
he wrote, my son has never known fear. He now
imagines footsteps in the dark, kidnappers looking in every quarter,
a ghost a period and disappearod everywhere, and admitting their
(27:32):
blood curdling noises, all in true radio fashion. Uh. Like
he thought this was I don't know. I think a
lot of kids about the experience where you see a movie,
or maybe you hear a spooky campfire story and you
stay up late in the night afterwards because you're worried.
You know that someone in your house may have said
(27:54):
bloody Mary three times right, or you're worried that someone
made a past two um or candy Man past three.
But yeah, you certainly feel compelled to do so um.
You know. And in the same way, I think we've
all more or less landed on like movies and video
games do not serial killers create. Uh, maybe could push
(28:16):
someone over the edge who's already you know, got serious
inclinations towards that kind of behavior, or maybe they get
some inspiration from a particular act they see. But in general,
healthy you know, kids with the with the balanced you know,
life style and and parents that are supportive or whatever
typically are not going to be turned into raving psychopaths
by listening to a spooky radio programmer, you know, playing
(28:39):
Grand Theft Auto or whatever. And this argument really does
go as far back as this, which is so funny
considering how it really was like a total theater of
the mind. So so let's get into why Little Orphan
Annie specifically. Were lots of other programs You mentioned The Shadow,
you know, that was a big one, Um, which was
another kind of spooky masked figure fighting crime. A lot
of these were like you know, pro know d C
(29:00):
comics kind of vibes. You know, they were like a
protagonist sort of like with the world against them and
they were kind of trying to right wrongs and all
of that stuff sort of do good y um. But
Little Orphan Annie specifically was a kid with a dog
um and she got the brunt of a lot of
these concerns from parents. Yeah. Yeah. There was a question
(29:24):
that a noted educator named Sidney Gruenberg asked The Times
when she said, why is it that the children seemed
to get their greatest pleasure from the very things which
parents most deplore. That's a question people ask in the
modern day. Right, you want to make something cool, have
people's parents tell them it's dangerous and you shouldn't listen
(29:45):
to it. Uh. Yeah. The program that kids loved the
most and the parents hated the most was Young Ralphie's Favorite.
That part of the story is true. It is Little
Orphan Annie. So she battle the big evil unions, gangsters, pirates,
other you know, the like the the Whitman's Sampler of
(30:08):
ne'er do wells, scoundrels and wrap scallions. Everybody apparently listen
to that show. Richard German in the Saturday Night Review
in nineteen sixty nine had a great line about this.
He said, all people during that period, one to two
budding deliquents, safecrackers, stock market manipulators or whatever, all listened
(30:31):
to Little Orphan Annie and a group of I'm laughing
just because I know this was a serious issue at
the time. But tell, tell us, fellow ridiculous historians, if
this does not sound a bit like overkill. Here we go.
In March of nineteen thirty three, a group of concerned
mothers in Scarsdale, New York, got together to protest radio
(30:55):
shows that shattered nerves, stimulate emotions of horror, and teach
bad grammar. Which was a big one. They singled out
Little Orphan Annie, and he said that it was very
poor because the main character, Little Orphan Any had a
bad emotional effect and an unnatural voice. Exactly what don't
(31:17):
we going with all these Verdi origons about? Exactly? And like,
you know, it introduced things like slang. You know, well, gosh,
she will ocurs. That's keen, you know, I mean, like
I'm sure again as goofy and dated is that way
of talking sounds now? Now? I bet a lot of
parents really were not into that, especially teachers, you know,
they were like, no, this is essentially tantamount to swearing. Yeah,
(31:39):
like in that what is that? That musical? The music
man Seth McFarlane, creator Family Guy, is a great cover
of it, the one where it's like P and that
stands for pool and that in River City it's gonna
it's gonna totally upend our way of life, you know, right,
I mean Pool, You got Pool of Step one. Next thing,
you know is the complete you know, crumbling of civilization ship.
(32:00):
People will be yeah, exactly, Yeah. I want to bring
that up because there's this commonality between these fears, the
idea of a slippery slope. Right, it's gonna terrorize children
in a way that compromises their moral standing and makes
them God forbid scali wags in the future. This is
what they thought was the sinister aspect of Little Orphan
(32:22):
Annie in the beginning, and people were adopting resolutions in
communities throughout the US that that wanted to fight back
against what they saw as the unnatural overstimulation and thrill
of children's cereals. S. E. R. I A L. S.
(32:43):
Mainly Orphan Annie and show called Skippy, which was about
a street willy city boy and it was a radio
and like like Annie, it was a radio show based
on a comic strip. What I what I love about
this too, though, man is I don't know if you
guys read a lot of young adult fiction, but I do,
and there's some really dark stuff in there. We talked
(33:04):
about roll Dall. That guy is nuts, you know, the true,
the actual original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He's got
this banger called George's Marvelous Medicine, which is all about
a kid trying to poison his grandmother fatally while his
parents are away shopping. It accidentally makes her giant. I've
got it if you want to borrow it. It's like
(33:25):
a quick afternoon read. But it's it's messed up. It's
about him trying to unsuccessfully murder his grandmother. So there's
there's already so much darkness and serious themes and like
children's books and young adult content, and it may owe
a lot to this period of radio drama, but what
(33:45):
like how valid is that concern? Do we think this
concern that it's just it's too much for children to
hear a little orphan? It depends, right, So, like at
this time, you know, radio is just starting to come
to like the heartland, you know, in places where kids
had to maybe do chores, you know, or it was
maybe they lived in a more of an a grarian
(34:06):
type situation. And I'm gonna go back to the the
other pop culture reference you made, which is that song
from the music Man trouble right here in Ritter City,
River City. The lyrics are fantastic, this one verse, in particular,
frittering away their noontime suppertime, short time to get the
ball in the pocket, never mind getting dandelions pulled, or
the screen door passed, or the beefsteak pounded, never mind
pumping any water until your parents are caught with the
(34:29):
sister and empty on a Saturday night. And that's trouble. Yes,
You've got lots and lots of trouble. Um. So it's
the idea of this distracting element. You could argue that maybe, yeah,
maybe that maybe they did have a point, but again,
it all comes down to discipline and like you know,
how you balance that stuff out with your kids. You
can't really blame the technology because, as we always say,
you can't really put those genies back in their bottles.
(34:49):
You can't shelter your kids on that stuff for long
because then what are they gonna do. They're just gonna
seek it out and and go to more underhanded lengths
to kind of get at them, you know, because they
they don't want to be left behind. That's that's how
kids are. Um. So I think to that end. There
there is a point. Is it making them, you know,
into is it robbing them in some way of like
(35:11):
brain capacity? Like I don't think so. I think time
has shown that, like plenty of very intelligent people came
out of this period and came out of the period
that we're living in with social media. It's all about balance,
and some kids can handle it better than others. And
a lot of that has to do with their parents.
It's true, It's true, And a lot of it has
to do with the support structure and community a kid
(35:33):
has beyond just their parents. But the parents are the
principal actors here, not not the media. Uh there's also
I love this slippery slope idea because it's like, ah, shucks,
mom won't let me listen to a little or fananny.
I guess I'm gonna read the necronomicon Like that does
to me. It just doesn't. It doesn't quite compute. But
(35:53):
they they didn't get the necronomicon in the Heartland for
many more years though, so or even just like I
think I'm gonna go you know, torture cats, you know,
I mean, yeah, I guess I'm gonna burn something. Uh.
So this it's funny because, uh, there was this great
line in a Smithsonian mag article about this period of
(36:16):
hysteria and and yes, we know the problematic etymology of hysteria,
but this period of panic of social outrage. In the
Smithsonian mag they point out that this radio series was
kind of like the Grand Theft Auto of its day,
which is wild but it's but it's it's funny because
(36:39):
this radio show for most people, I'd say these days,
you when you think of or fanany you think of
the musical that is, like you said, old based on
the radio show that has based itself upon a comic
strip that itself is based or inspired by the title
from an earlier poem. And these adaptations and reimaginings aren't
(37:01):
always the same, not the same tone that comic we
were talking about earlier. It's kind of grim because grim
stuff was happening in the uh in the twenties and thirties.
And then the Broadway musical is super optimistic, right, you know.
And I will also say that that easy Street song
is pretty great. There's a lot of great songs in
(37:23):
Annie the musical, um and I mean there's things about
the movie that are pretty grim, like MS hannighan Is
is incredibly portrayed by Carol Burnett, just like sopping lee
drunk and like you know, again we mentioned earlier the
idea of the seductive villain like she is like all
you see her in her like weird kind of ninety
all the time and very inappropriate. I mean, there's some
(37:43):
pretty wild things in that movie as well. But the
Broadway Musical it was relatively optimistic, you're right, the idea
of Annie's getting rescued from this bad situation by Daddy Warbucks, um,
and then she's able to kind of help her compatriots,
you know, escape their you know, plite as well. But
in general, the comic strip and then the radio show
(38:06):
it was all about, like, you know, Annie being this
kind of force of good and justice in a completely
crooked and uh and negative and abusive world. And we're
we're midway through this strange exploration, and I think Noel's
fair to say that we've already gone to some pretty
(38:27):
interesting unexpected spaces here. Indeed, who knows what those are.
We haven't actually listened to the edit yet. We're just
kind of flying blind here, but we know that we
definitely touched on some interesting stuff. And now I'm drinking
my ovaltine. I don't know if you see this, but
I've got a big old glass of good stuff. Yeah
for bones, for your bones, um, and it gives you
a pep. Yes. And we will return very soon with
(38:51):
part two of the Sinister Influence of Little Orphan Annie Uh.
So everybody make sure to drink your ovaltine. I guess
that's the main takeaway of our story today. And and
when it comes to PEP, we always want to thank
our very own PEP master one and only super producer,
Mr Max Williams. Thinks also to Alex Williams, who composed
(39:13):
the banging soundtrack that is I believe playing behind us now.
One would think so many mysteries in the world of
podcast production editing, but I really hope that Max uh
followed the president that he has set for low these
many years or months anyway, and has the music playing
underneath this as we speak. PEP PEP to Christopher Haciots
and Eaves Jeff Cotes, both here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland,
(39:36):
the Quister, may your pep drained from you, sir, and
and and leave you a husk of a man, and
that you may never darken our doorstep again. No, that's
not sure. I missed Jonathan. We gotta have him back.
We don't. It's not really up to us, though, so
we'll see what happens behind the curtain. He's a busy guy.
Check out his show tech stuff, with new episodes coming
out like every day. Wait, Ben, you're not saying that.
(39:58):
He also like Moonlights as an another podcast teams Nemesis,
are you because that would be too much for me
to bear. I can't handle that, you know. I was
thinking of, Uh, We've got some exciting stuff on the
way early next year, folks. I was thinking of seeing
if he might be a somewhat like a thematic bridge
in the expanding Ridiculous Universe. But it's a it's a
(40:20):
weird thing to sell to our colleagues, like over Ridiculous Romance.
We were like, let's explain what our whole thing is
with this guy. Do you want them on? You know,
we're still working out negotiations are underway. Jonathan's rider is crazy,
but as you said, we do love him. Shout out
of course, also to Mr Casey Pegram. Isn't it weird
(40:40):
that Jonathan only wants left foot socks and his rider.
What's that about? Yeah, yeah, it's uh, you know, I
gotta be honest. I've read the whole thing once, but
it took all weekend. It is very specific. I don't
know what happens with all. We have a pile of
just right foot socks in the office. Yeah, and then
(41:02):
in the whole whole section of this writer is just
like in Cipher's like Zodiac killer type stuff. It's very odd. Hey,
it takes all kinds. We've got to get a decoder badge.
We all do Cliffhanger. We'll see you next time. Books.
(41:23):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's have a big hand
for our one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
I am Ben. I'm a big I think you can
clap for yourself. Max, you've fully support Yes, Yes, that
is my rider die Mr Noel Brown himself, the one
(00:50):
and only. I am Ben Boland. We're hurtling headlong toward
the end of one the beginning of two. Uh. This
is the time of year when a lot of people
in the US, regardless of their personal religious beliefs, are
living in Christmas Land. Right. We've we've just gotten over
(01:10):
the Thanksgiving hump. Hope everybody had a good one, and
now for the next. For the next few weeks, everything
is gonna be Christmas. Right. It's gonna be the Mariah
Carey song again, right, and all the all the old hits. Yeah.
People have really strong opinions about that Mariah Carey song.
Like there's some jukeboxes that won't let you play it
(01:32):
more than once, you know, any given night. I've seen
memes about it. It's very divisive. I mean it's obviously
a stone called banger, But do I want to hear
it like ad nauseum throughout the Christmas time? It does
kind of suck some of the joy out of the
song when it's beaten to death, you know. Yeah, And
and television shows will have themed Christmas episodes your Saturday
(01:53):
Night Lives, your Simpsons and so on. You will also
see a lot of nostalgia, and you'll see things become
singularly important, like every every parent in the audience today Again,
whether or not you celebrate Christmas, you've heard the same stories.
They come back, insert toy here is the new hot thing,
(02:14):
and thus it is impossible to find, you know, an
Elmo that wants you to tickle it, which no one
thinks it's creepy for some reason, but everybody needs one
and they did. That was a frenzy around that weird toy. Uh.
It's one of those things where it's like, I think
the frenzy just comes from the exclusivity, right, Like you
gotta wonder is it manufactured? Do they not make enough
(02:36):
of them on purpose? So there would be this like
massive hysteria around what is ultimately a pretty obnoxious toy.
The novelty of which would probably wear out pretty quick
for most kids. You don't even see them around anymore,
Like I've never run into one, like in a thrift
store or anything, which surprising. Maybe they are covenant, maybe
like people just held onto them. And and it is
still continues to be an item of great pride that
(02:58):
you that you got one, you know, yeah, like a
badge of of capitalist honor, you know, like you wouldn't
see a purple heartner thrift store. Maybe that's uh, maybe
that is an unfair comparison spoiling, which would be sad
but not. Yeah. And and so we were talking a
little bit off air about different things that happened in
(03:21):
the nostalgia wave of American Christmas. And we notice, of
course that there are the same movies that pop up.
People watch them almost ritualistically with their loved ones, family
and friends. There's one film without the most creative name,
but it's definitely a classic this time of year. It's
called a Christmas Story, and the Christmas Story plot concerns
(03:45):
the adventures of a young man named Ralphie Ralphie Parker,
and a lot of stuff goes down here. It's kind
of tough to spoil this one, NOL, I think because
the story is so quin essentially like established culture, but
we're we're using poor Ralphie as a tangent here, I
believe a segway or just just kind of like a
(04:08):
setting the stage kind of situation. You know. It's funny
been um here in Atlanta, I think this might be
at our neck of the woods center kind of thing.
But on TBS every year, they for for many many years,
they would play a Christmas story for like twenty like
on a loop leading up to Christmas, like over and
over and over and over again. So I'm pretty sure
(04:28):
I've seen the entirety of a Christmas story, just not
in the right order. Like I I know everything about
that movie literally more more like backwards than front words,
but I absolutely know everything that happened. But I don't
think I've ever sat down in one go and watched
a Christmas story. Oh fun. So so you have a postmodern,
(04:50):
you have a post experience non linear. I love it,
and it is ultimately a postmodern kind of story because
it's a retelling of an era sort of stylized kind
of fantasy version of the nineteen fifties, um, you know,
with Ralphie and his brother and the you know, his
father and the leg lamp that was like, what was
(05:11):
that He got that as a prize or some sort
of clearinghouse sweep steaks or something like that, this major reward.
I just remember that, but I don't remember quite how
he got it. Yeah, it's um, it's weird, like a
love letter to this period of time, definitely through rose
colored glasses. It's uh, it's believed to be set in
(05:32):
nineteen forty, but there are a lot of anachronisms in
there because it's really it's really more about the vibe,
like the Norman Rockwell esque vibe of how people viewed
America at the time. And it heads up, folks, this
is a two part episode. This is gonna be a
wild ride. We're gonna go some weird places, will return
to a good place. But we are very proud of
(05:54):
ourselves for making sure you know it's a two part episode.
In advance. Thank you Max, Thank you Uh Nolan. I
would like to accept this award on behalf of all
the other episodes that accidentally became two parters. Major award,
this major award. And there's this thing, No, there's this
thing that happens there. There's so many iconic moments in
(06:17):
a Christmas story that you almost just remember them as
moments rather than like one long narrative. You know, he
gets his tongue stock, he curses in front of his parents,
you'll shoot your eye out, etcetera. For a big part
of the movie, he has this quest two interact with
his favorite radio program, the equivalent of like his favorite
(06:39):
TV show, and his favorite radio program is something called
Little Orphan Annie. Uh and Max Nolan, I have a
clip of this the Little Orphan Annie radio show that
we'd like to would like to just drop in play that.
For us, it was the Little Church Balls Want Long?
(07:03):
Who do you see? It's a little yesterday. Remember Mr
Flint was trying to sell stock in the new Bridge
to Jake at the emporium. But and he convinced Jake
you ought to think the matter over before he went
into debt to buy stock. But here it is the
(07:23):
next day after school and Annie and joy of walking
across the snowy field pard the river to see the
new bridge. She'd see any it sure did seem good
to get back to the old school again, didn't I'll
say it? Did you? Gee? The kids were awful glad
to see it's worth it, and I was awful glad
to see them. Wow, gee, Willakers, that was an awful
team Ben, Where did you dig that one up? Whole wowser? Okay,
(07:49):
So I'm sorry, I just I think we buried the
lead there little bit. She's trying to convince somebody not
to go into debt to buy stock. That's that's that's
the conflict, that's the central const like in this episode.
This episodes from nineteen thirty six. So yeah, I didn't
want to spoil the whole thing, but yeah, I'm glad
that stood out to you guys as well, the concept
(08:10):
of like what do children worry about? Yeah, so this
was a theme. I mean, this is something that that
played throughout the series. Um, you know, it originally was
a comic strip that was based on subject matter that
went even further back to a five poem called Little
(08:30):
Orphans Annie by James Whitcomb Riley. I think it maybe
it wasn't based on that exactly, but originally the comic
was going to be called Little Orphan Auto Um, but
a friend of the comic strip creator, Harold Gray, was
convinced to change the name and the you know, the
gender of the of the main protagonist to Little Orphan
(08:50):
Annie based on the I think popularity of that poem.
But it was all about like strike breaking and like
it was very anti Roosevelt policies. You know, it was
very interesting. And then it was like clearly you know,
meant for kids, I think, but I mean adults like
the Funnies too. There's a lot of an interesting kind
of like buried adult messaging and like old comic strips.
(09:13):
If you look back at the the father or the
adoptive father, the figure, Yeah, it's literally named Warbucks as
a surname, so that's clearly seems like a war profit
here went over my head as a kid. I thought
he was just wealthy, going over my head until you
just pointed it up. And I didn't even think about
(09:34):
the the not too subtle buried message their war bucks,
like it was my war chests, you know, Yeah, that's
exactly what it was. Um. But that transferred over to
the radio show and then this was like you know
the golden age of of wireless you know, the radio people,
families gathering around hearing you know, the news and all
(09:54):
of that stuff. But also these serialized drama performances, you
know that that like you know, had new stories, Monster
of the Week kind of things a week to week. Yeah. Yeah.
And here's the thing. So if you look back at
this now from one, it's easy for us to go, okay,
that's not necessarily controversial. There are some hidden political agendas
(10:18):
in there. Are they a proposed to today? Maybe not exactly.
And this probably goes over the heads of most children.
It might surprise folks to realize that a lot of
parents were squigged out by this radio program because it
had a hold on their children. And when we say hold,
(10:41):
it had the same kind of hold that a show
like Breaking Bad, or The Sopranos or or The Wire
a Game of Thrones would have on people. But it
was a children's show and it was four kids, and
it was able to direct children to do things, to
push their parents for things, namely products, right to make
(11:02):
their parents buy stuff because uh, you know, little orphan anity,
just like old dirty Bastard said about Wu tang is
for the kids. Parents were freaked out. They didn't appreciate
all the child directed marketing. They were to the mercy
of whatever these folks who created the show decided to
(11:24):
sell absolutely and little or Finanni was also in the
words of the wood Saint clani Fern, which remember nothing
to with because her catchphrase was she was the spunky
orphan with a heart of gold and a fast left,
and that was referring to the fact that she and
(11:44):
her dog Sandy were kind of this like almost like
detective pair Like you could clearly see the influence and
other pop culture pairings of like kid detectives, kind of
like Scooby Doo for example, you know, clearly influenced by
the pairing of you know, Annie and her dog um
or things like Brain and Penny and inspector Gadget. You know,
this is very much a pop culture trope that clearly
(12:06):
got its beginnings here. But you're right, then the political
you know, messaging aside, which apparently really you know, stemmed
from Gray's own political views. Um many of the plots
of the comics, apparently, um almost got the comic pulled
from the newspapers that it ran in, Like I'm just
gonna really quickly because this interesting time ran an article
(12:27):
called the surprisingly controversial plots that almost got Little Orphan
Annie axed, one of which I'm just gonna read it
right from here because it's fantastic. Um. The plot takes
a turn for the propagandistic when political racketeers threatened to
destroy one of Daddy Warbuck's factories. To the editor of
the Huntington Herald Dispatch, the rhetorics seems better suited to
Ann Rand than to America's Best Love Orphan, as he
(12:50):
describes the offending plotline per time, here's from the letter
to the editor. All political leaders, and it follows every
public official are at once indicted as crooks. And to
accept such a sweeping indictment is to permit the creator
of Little Orphan, Annie and the Chicago Tribune syndicate to
attack and condemn all persons, all institutions, and all ideas
(13:11):
save those they choose to label acceptable. And I pointed
out because it's interesting because clearly the source material of
this comic, or the inspiration behind it, I guess, is
pretty virulently pro capitalism. It's a little interesting because it's
the dude's politics seems to change a little bit as
(13:31):
time goes on, but he ends up in a place that,
while seeming to be like pro hard work and the
working man and all that really kind of raises up
characters like Daddy Warbucks, who are ultimately the you know,
fat cats right in the factories and all of that stuff,
And it takes on this kind of weird, almost propagandistic tone, right, Yeah,
but it was very randy and in its concepts, you know,
(13:56):
just just as you said. In fact, when F. D
Are was elected president in thirty two, Great appeared to
kill off Warbucks, later implying that Warbucks could not coexist
in the world with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He actually killed
(14:18):
him off in forty five, and then after the real
life Roosevelt dies, Gray brings Daddy Warbucks back and he
and he says in the comic strip, so how I
feel that the climate here has changed since I went away?
So it's like, come on, man, this is for kids.
What are you doing getting in their heads this way?
This is this is at best a precursor to the
(14:42):
approach that is later perfected by a big corporation Little
orphan AI. This massively successful radio program was I Kid
you not. This is a true story. It was pretty
much one long commercial. It was entirely sponsored by Ovaltine
(15:03):
and the writing staff they were all advertising executives at Ovaltine.
You know, for some, for some advertisers, this is like
a dream you wouldn't dare to dream. The radio show
existed entirely to propagate the use of Ovaltine in the
American public, and it was so successful because it was
(15:27):
a new approach. It was a new kind of media
um well, not necessarily a new strategy, but it was
new in terms of its target audience. And we see
the dangers of this reflected today and things like um
Facebook or Metaverse or whatever meta I'm supposed to call
them now apparently you can see this and things like
their plans to make an Instagram for children, exclusively and
(15:50):
specifically for children. And this just shows us that there
is a cyclical, continual history of media technology scares when
it comes to kids, like even now, you know, there's
a lot of debate about when a child should have
a smartphone or when a kid should be allowed to
have UM Well, nowadays, I guess to be a TikTok
(16:10):
account because kids aren't really on Facebook unless they have
to keep in touch with you know, their mom or
their uncle or something. But what's startling is that it's
not so surprising that these conversations always come up, but
it is incredibly surprising that they are so similar from
one century to the next. I mean, you and I
(16:32):
were looking into some of this stuff and we found
a great Slate article called a History of Media Technology
Scares or Don't Touch that Dial by Vaughan Bell, and
in this Bell points out that these concerns over like
technology and how it affects it molds the young minds
of children date all the way back to the birth
(16:52):
of literacy. Was a technology that's so crazy and I
love this and we're gonna get back to a Christmas
story and all of the uh, you know, new fangled technology,
you know as we kind of know it today, which
really set the groundwork for what we know as advertising
and television and commercials and all of that good stuff.
But it's true, Uh, it was intensely distrusted. Socrates warned
(17:16):
against writing itself because he thought that it would quote
create forgetfulness and the learners souls. And let's remember that
so much of the history and mythology of that time
was passed down through the oral tradition, and it was
very important memorization and all of that was such a
crucial feature of that storytelling and essentially academia. So Socrates
(17:41):
warned that it would actually corrupt the youth. He advised
that children won't be able to distinguish fantasy from reality,
and so it's up to parents to ensure that they
only hear allegories that are deemed to be proper as
opposed to quote unquote improper tales. Uh could in fact
completely screw up their developmental process, you know, as their
(18:05):
brains are developing in this crucial time. And you know,
the this whole line of thinking from Socrates really did
set a foundation for what we think of today as
like too much screen time. You know, it's kind of
evolved into that kind of thinking. Are like video games
will rot your brain and all that kind of stuff.
Older generations typically worn and are suspicious of new technology,
(18:29):
whatever it might be, whether it's um even the new
type of music. You know, like to maybe our grandparents,
like jazz and kind of swing music at the time
would have been incredibly controversial, you know, to their parents.
They would have thought of that as there's the devil's music.
And nowadays, you know, with music being so all over
the place, and they're being certainly some pretty extreme forms
(18:50):
of it. Parents that maybe aren't as keyed into that
kind of pop culture stuff certainly, or maybe you're a
little more religious in their background certainly could look at
things like slipnot or like heavier music is absolutely being demonic,
you know, satanic in some way and not not to
mention like corrupting like centuries ago. So when it's like
I don't and music with different instruments, that's on God,
(19:14):
Like give me Gregorian chat. Okay, back when things were good,
I like this is you're you're absolutely right. And the
same thing happened with television, The same thing happened with VHS,
the same thing happened with dungeons and dragons. Now it's
a social media technology. Yeah, now it's all about social media.
And so when the radio came into play, this immediately
(19:37):
fit the bill of a new technological threat to the
minds of the young. Wireless radio was now accused of
distracting children from practicing the same literacy Socrates have warned
about so long ago. Radio was apparently also making children
do terribly in school, and a big part of the
blame fell specifically on these audio thick shin programs, which
(20:01):
now are considered so like old timey you you find
them as nostalgia clips on YouTube, or if you go
into a a Cracker Barrel, which is a nostalgia based
restaurant here in the US, you'll see you'll see DVDs
of stuff like Little or fananim or The Shadow Knows
sold in their um faux country store. But think about
(20:23):
the alternative what it was luring kids away from. You know,
they're like very strict taskmasterly like school teachers that were
just kind of teaching them. They're you know, reading, writing
and arithmetic, probably not with a whole lot of theatrical flare.
So I mean even just the most basic kind of
levels of performativeness or theatricality that they would hear on
(20:43):
what we now you know, clock is being incredibly dated
and stuffy. Radio shows would have been just like a
whole new world of of of information and of just
you know, and absolutely could have could have been distracting.
It's described here, um in this Slate article, Um his
sure you have media technology scares from the printing press
to Facebook. Um As. Actually they quote a Grammophone magazine
(21:07):
article from ninety six um and it says that children
quote had developed the habit of dividing attention between the
hum drum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling
excitement of the loudspeaker. Yeah, play that back in your head, folks,
because I I have a question, and I don't want
this to be gotcha journalism or got a game show
(21:28):
question for you guys, but Noel Max, When is the
last time that you just watched a television show or
a film without also being on your phone, without also,
you know, working on something on your computer, Or when's
the last time you listen to a song without also
being on your phone or engaging with some other piece
(21:50):
of media. That's what the grammophone is complaining about, right, Well,
it's an important question, and I think the pandemic has
really tipped the scales in a negative way. I mean,
spent so much time just consuming media in our homes
and multitasking with the subtitles on and and we have
just infinite distractions at our fingertips. I recently went and
saw a movie in the theater and and it kept
(22:12):
having to fight the urge to whip out my phone.
But you know that in the theater you will get
shamed and and for good reason. But at home, when
it's just you in charge, you can do whatever you want.
And I would argue that you are not fully experiencing
any of those things, you know, if you're like kind
of bouncing back and forth between watching the New Dune
movie while also checking the you know, doom scrolling on
(22:32):
Instagram and also perhaps um, you know, dealing with a
kid or something that's actually there in person. Okay, so
for you, it was a it was a movie. It
was you answer to your question was it was? It
was a movie in the theater a week or so ago,
I saw The French Dispatch by west Anderson. Nice Max,
(22:52):
how about you? Yeah, I look that Noel mentioned like
a movie because like when I'm watching a movie, whether
it's at home or out, I will generally us watch that.
But from at home, I'll take a break and go
do something. But like, and I watch a lot of sports.
And if I'm watching sports, I'm like have multiple games on.
I will be texting people, I will be doing watch
mccallough and everything else in the side. Like I never
(23:13):
just sit down really just watch TV and watched sports.
So yeah, it reminds me of there's a scene and oh, brother,
where art thou Where there the group is. I think
it's a brother art that where the group is singing
as the Saggy Bottom Boys. And then you cut to
different homes where people are listening to this song and
(23:34):
people are just sitting there in their rooms with the
radio on, just kind of nodding because they're fully they're
fully engaged. And so for the Gramophones example, and I
love that you bring this quote in all the Grammophones
example of multitasking is interesting because they phrase it as
the worst thing since unsliced bread. You know, if I
(23:57):
could play with that cliche. So it's strange because now
we see that that is normal in this age of
ubiquitous information. And as we continue, we are going somewhere
with this folks. We're going back to Annie. We're gonna
hang out with her for a while. As we continue
in this episode, it's a question that maybe you can
ask yourself and your friends and your family, um kids,
(24:20):
if you have kids, which is, how how normal is
it to multitask this way? And how normal should it be? Um?
It's a good question, and I think it really is
at the heart of the same argument that we still
make today when it comes to social media, it's too
(24:41):
intense based on you know, for kids brains, it takes
them too many different directions, and it gives them too much,
too many options, and they they're not really equipped maybe
to juggle all those options, just like I'm not equipped
to juggle watching done uh dooms growing on Instagram and
you know, pay them out with my cat. You know,
I would probably pick one and roll with it. And
(25:02):
that became the crux of the argument in the nineteen
thirties as these kind of children's radio hours began to
get more and more popular, and shows like specifically Little
or Finanni dealt with, you know, kind of more shady
aspects of of life. You know, there's like seductive villains
and you know, cat burglars like you know, breaking into
(25:24):
homes and criminals and like very unsavory types that maybe
kids would have kind of been um shielded from even
knowing about. Yeah, yeah, and children have a tremendous capacity
for imagination and radio creates, uh, something that we still
owe a lot to in the world of podcasting, which
(25:44):
is a theater of the mind of folks. We hope
that you enjoy our occasional re enactments of things on
on any of the shows the three of us do
because there are a lot of work, but there are
a lot of fun and we quite enjoy them. Podcast
making No Mistake at her best or a direct descendant
from the golden age of radio. Parents were worried, like,
(26:06):
I like that you pointed this out, man. Parents were
worried that this gave kids too much to think about,
to put it in really simple terms, and that it
might make things that are dangerous in real life seem appealing. Right, mysterious,
Edgy Cool, I love that you just said. Mysterious. Bennett
(26:28):
reminds me of There's this amazingly hilarious and heartwarming scene
in The Sopranos where Bobby bacalas kids they've lost their mother, um,
and there's a whole subplot where like Janice is like
trying to essentially, you know, reel them in and make
become like the new mom, and she's told psychopath playing
all these head games. But at one point Bobby's daughter
(26:48):
is upset and Bobby's like, did you let her read
her Nancy Drew book? So it was like she wouldn't
even calm down by reading her Nancy Drew book. She
said they were too mysterious. That's great, h Nancy drew, Well, yeah,
like this is this is fascinating. There's a letter that
one guy wrote to The New York Times with the
(27:10):
ninety three and he described, uh, he described the delatorious
effects that radio's children's hours would have on his kid.
He said the adventures were all too hair raising, and
he wrote, my son has never known fear. He now
imagines footsteps in the dark, kidnappers looking in every quarter,
a ghost a period and disappearod everywhere, and admitting their
(27:32):
blood curdling noises, all in true radio fashion. Uh. Like
he thought this was I don't know. I think a
lot of kids about the experience where you see a movie,
or maybe you hear a spooky campfire story and you
stay up late in the night afterwards because you're worried.
You know that someone in your house may have said
(27:54):
bloody Mary three times right, or you're worried that someone
made a past two um or candy Man past three.
But yeah, you certainly feel compelled to do so um.
You know. And in the same way, I think we've
all more or less landed on like movies and video
games do not serial killers create. Uh, maybe could push
(28:16):
someone over the edge who's already you know, got serious
inclinations towards that kind of behavior, or maybe they get
some inspiration from a particular act they see. But in general,
healthy you know, kids with the with the balanced you know,
life style and and parents that are supportive or whatever
typically are not going to be turned into raving psychopaths
by listening to a spooky radio programmer, you know, playing
(28:39):
Grand Theft Auto or whatever. And this argument really does
go as far back as this, which is so funny
considering how it really was like a total theater of
the mind. So so let's get into why Little Orphan
Annie specifically. Were lots of other programs You mentioned The Shadow,
you know, that was a big one, Um, which was
another kind of spooky masked figure fighting crime. A lot
of these were like you know, pro know d C
(29:00):
comics kind of vibes. You know, they were like a
protagonist sort of like with the world against them and
they were kind of trying to right wrongs and all
of that stuff sort of do good y um. But
Little Orphan Annie specifically was a kid with a dog
um and she got the brunt of a lot of
these concerns from parents. Yeah. Yeah. There was a question
(29:24):
that a noted educator named Sidney Gruenberg asked The Times
when she said, why is it that the children seemed
to get their greatest pleasure from the very things which
parents most deplore. That's a question people ask in the
modern day. Right, you want to make something cool, have
people's parents tell them it's dangerous and you shouldn't listen
(29:45):
to it. Uh. Yeah. The program that kids loved the
most and the parents hated the most was Young Ralphie's Favorite.
That part of the story is true. It is Little
Orphan Annie. So she battle the big evil unions, gangsters, pirates,
other you know, the like the the Whitman's Sampler of
(30:08):
ne'er do wells, scoundrels and wrap scallions. Everybody apparently listen
to that show. Richard German in the Saturday Night Review
in nineteen sixty nine had a great line about this.
He said, all people during that period, one to two
budding deliquents, safecrackers, stock market manipulators or whatever, all listened
(30:31):
to Little Orphan Annie and a group of I'm laughing
just because I know this was a serious issue at
the time. But tell, tell us, fellow ridiculous historians, if
this does not sound a bit like overkill. Here we go.
In March of nineteen thirty three, a group of concerned
mothers in Scarsdale, New York, got together to protest radio
(30:55):
shows that shattered nerves, stimulate emotions of horror, and teach
bad grammar. Which was a big one. They singled out
Little Orphan Annie, and he said that it was very
poor because the main character, Little Orphan Any had a
bad emotional effect and an unnatural voice. Exactly what don't
(31:17):
we going with all these Verdi origons about? Exactly? And like,
you know, it introduced things like slang. You know, well, gosh,
she will ocurs. That's keen, you know, I mean, like
I'm sure again as goofy and dated is that way
of talking sounds now? Now? I bet a lot of
parents really were not into that, especially teachers, you know,
they were like, no, this is essentially tantamount to swearing. Yeah,
(31:39):
like in that what is that? That musical? The music
man Seth McFarlane, creator Family Guy, is a great cover
of it, the one where it's like P and that
stands for pool and that in River City it's gonna
it's gonna totally upend our way of life, you know, right,
I mean Pool, You got Pool of Step one. Next thing,
you know is the complete you know, crumbling of civilization ship.
(32:00):
People will be yeah, exactly, Yeah. I want to bring
that up because there's this commonality between these fears, the
idea of a slippery slope. Right, it's gonna terrorize children
in a way that compromises their moral standing and makes
them God forbid scali wags in the future. This is
what they thought was the sinister aspect of Little Orphan
(32:22):
Annie in the beginning, and people were adopting resolutions in
communities throughout the US that that wanted to fight back
against what they saw as the unnatural overstimulation and thrill
of children's cereals. S. E. R. I A L. S.
(32:43):
Mainly Orphan Annie and show called Skippy, which was about
a street willy city boy and it was a radio
and like like Annie, it was a radio show based
on a comic strip. What I what I love about
this too, though, man is I don't know if you
guys read a lot of young adult fiction, but I do,
and there's some really dark stuff in there. We talked
(33:04):
about roll Dall. That guy is nuts, you know, the true,
the actual original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He's got
this banger called George's Marvelous Medicine, which is all about
a kid trying to poison his grandmother fatally while his
parents are away shopping. It accidentally makes her giant. I've
got it if you want to borrow it. It's like
(33:25):
a quick afternoon read. But it's it's messed up. It's
about him trying to unsuccessfully murder his grandmother. So there's
there's already so much darkness and serious themes and like
children's books and young adult content, and it may owe
a lot to this period of radio drama, but what
(33:45):
like how valid is that concern? Do we think this
concern that it's just it's too much for children to
hear a little orphan? It depends, right, So, like at
this time, you know, radio is just starting to come
to like the heartland, you know, in places where kids
had to maybe do chores, you know, or it was
maybe they lived in a more of an a grarian
(34:06):
type situation. And I'm gonna go back to the the
other pop culture reference you made, which is that song
from the music Man trouble right here in Ritter City,
River City. The lyrics are fantastic, this one verse, in particular,
frittering away their noontime suppertime, short time to get the
ball in the pocket, never mind getting dandelions pulled, or
the screen door passed, or the beefsteak pounded, never mind
pumping any water until your parents are caught with the
(34:29):
sister and empty on a Saturday night. And that's trouble. Yes,
You've got lots and lots of trouble. Um. So it's
the idea of this distracting element. You could argue that maybe, yeah,
maybe that maybe they did have a point, but again,
it all comes down to discipline and like you know,
how you balance that stuff out with your kids. You
can't really blame the technology because, as we always say,
you can't really put those genies back in their bottles.
(34:49):
You can't shelter your kids on that stuff for long
because then what are they gonna do. They're just gonna
seek it out and and go to more underhanded lengths
to kind of get at them, you know, because they
they don't want to be left behind. That's that's how
kids are. Um. So I think to that end. There
there is a point. Is it making them, you know,
into is it robbing them in some way of like
(35:11):
brain capacity? Like I don't think so. I think time
has shown that, like plenty of very intelligent people came
out of this period and came out of the period
that we're living in with social media. It's all about balance,
and some kids can handle it better than others. And
a lot of that has to do with their parents.
It's true, It's true, And a lot of it has
to do with the support structure and community a kid
(35:33):
has beyond just their parents. But the parents are the
principal actors here, not not the media. Uh there's also
I love this slippery slope idea because it's like, ah, shucks,
mom won't let me listen to a little or fananny.
I guess I'm gonna read the necronomicon Like that does
to me. It just doesn't. It doesn't quite compute. But
(35:53):
they they didn't get the necronomicon in the Heartland for
many more years though, so or even just like I
think I'm gonna go you know, torture cats, you know,
I mean, yeah, I guess I'm gonna burn something. Uh.
So this it's funny because, uh, there was this great
line in a Smithsonian mag article about this period of
(36:16):
hysteria and and yes, we know the problematic etymology of hysteria,
but this period of panic of social outrage. In the
Smithsonian mag they point out that this radio series was
kind of like the Grand Theft Auto of its day,
which is wild but it's but it's it's funny because
(36:39):
this radio show for most people, I'd say these days,
you when you think of or fanany you think of
the musical that is, like you said, old based on
the radio show that has based itself upon a comic
strip that itself is based or inspired by the title
from an earlier poem. And these adaptations and reimaginings aren't
(37:01):
always the same, not the same tone that comic we
were talking about earlier. It's kind of grim because grim
stuff was happening in the uh in the twenties and thirties.
And then the Broadway musical is super optimistic, right, you know.
And I will also say that that easy Street song
is pretty great. There's a lot of great songs in
(37:23):
Annie the musical, um and I mean there's things about
the movie that are pretty grim, like MS hannighan Is
is incredibly portrayed by Carol Burnett, just like sopping lee
drunk and like you know, again we mentioned earlier the
idea of the seductive villain like she is like all
you see her in her like weird kind of ninety
all the time and very inappropriate. I mean, there's some
(37:43):
pretty wild things in that movie as well. But the
Broadway Musical it was relatively optimistic, you're right, the idea
of Annie's getting rescued from this bad situation by Daddy Warbucks, um,
and then she's able to kind of help her compatriots,
you know, escape their you know, plite as well. But
in general, the comic strip and then the radio show
(38:06):
it was all about, like, you know, Annie being this
kind of force of good and justice in a completely
crooked and uh and negative and abusive world. And we're
we're midway through this strange exploration, and I think Noel's
fair to say that we've already gone to some pretty
(38:27):
interesting unexpected spaces here. Indeed, who knows what those are.
We haven't actually listened to the edit yet. We're just
kind of flying blind here, but we know that we
definitely touched on some interesting stuff. And now I'm drinking
my ovaltine. I don't know if you see this, but
I've got a big old glass of good stuff. Yeah
for bones, for your bones, um, and it gives you
a pep. Yes. And we will return very soon with
(38:51):
part two of the Sinister Influence of Little Orphan Annie Uh.
So everybody make sure to drink your ovaltine. I guess
that's the main takeaway of our story today. And and
when it comes to PEP, we always want to thank
our very own PEP master one and only super producer,
Mr Max Williams. Thinks also to Alex Williams, who composed
(39:13):
the banging soundtrack that is I believe playing behind us now.
One would think so many mysteries in the world of
podcast production editing, but I really hope that Max uh
followed the president that he has set for low these
many years or months anyway, and has the music playing
underneath this as we speak. PEP PEP to Christopher Haciots
and Eaves Jeff Cotes, both here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland,
(39:36):
the Quister, may your pep drained from you, sir, and
and and leave you a husk of a man, and
that you may never darken our doorstep again. No, that's
not sure. I missed Jonathan. We gotta have him back.
We don't. It's not really up to us, though, so
we'll see what happens behind the curtain. He's a busy guy.
Check out his show tech stuff, with new episodes coming
out like every day. Wait, Ben, you're not saying that.
(39:58):
He also like Moonlights as an another podcast teams Nemesis,
are you because that would be too much for me
to bear. I can't handle that, you know. I was
thinking of, Uh, We've got some exciting stuff on the
way early next year, folks. I was thinking of seeing
if he might be a somewhat like a thematic bridge
in the expanding Ridiculous Universe. But it's a it's a
(40:20):
weird thing to sell to our colleagues, like over Ridiculous Romance.
We were like, let's explain what our whole thing is
with this guy. Do you want them on? You know,
we're still working out negotiations are underway. Jonathan's rider is crazy,
but as you said, we do love him. Shout out
of course, also to Mr Casey Pegram. Isn't it weird
(40:40):
that Jonathan only wants left foot socks and his rider.
What's that about? Yeah, yeah, it's uh, you know, I
gotta be honest. I've read the whole thing once, but
it took all weekend. It is very specific. I don't
know what happens with all. We have a pile of
just right foot socks in the office. Yeah, and then
(41:02):
in the whole whole section of this writer is just
like in Cipher's like Zodiac killer type stuff. It's very odd. Hey,
it takes all kinds. We've got to get a decoder badge.
We all do Cliffhanger. We'll see you next time. Books.
(41:23):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
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your favorite shows.
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